Savage Country

by Robert Olmstead

  “Tell the man what you have decided,” the woman said, shooing away the rooster.

  “We are as we were,” Matthew said.

  “We are going off to buffalo,” Mark said.

  “You are to do whatever this man tells you,” she instructed her sons. “They think they’re smart,” she said, a flash in her loving eyes. “You’ve got to give them a little hell every once in a while,” and then she said, “I warn you right now, they will eat you out of house and home.”

  She went to each boy and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Act as men,” she said to them, and then she turned to Michael. “I want them home for Easter.”

  “You’ll make her Easter,” Michael said to John, the youngest, and the boy smiled.

  “I’m kind of tired of talking,” the woman said. “Your father’s blessing goes with you.”

  Michael paid their mother half their wages in advance. There’d be enough for her to leave and winter among townsmen, enough to pay a doctor to treat her husband.

  He told them to follow the creek west to the crossing and wait on the wagon train and when it arrived they were to tell Mrs. Coughlin that Michael Coughlin had hired them for the season. He told them to hang the turkeys and dress out the deer for their mother before they left.

  That morning as the boys reached the path opening by which they were to go away, they turned and took a long look back, their mother waving, a hand held over her heart.

  Midday the wagon train reached the bank of another river, where they crossed. They deflected from the road and followed the creek and Michael could see them coming with Darby bringing them in. The four boys tramped along in their cotton overalls with their shoes knotted together and slung over their necks, bouncing against their chests. Matthew carried a late-­model Winchester over his shoulder.

  Aubuchon directed the boys in digging a trench and laying the fire. He would cook and they would eat and rest and remain through the heat of the day before traveling into the darkness. They found their shady spots and spread their bedding. They pulled their hats to cover their faces and fall asleep.

  In the days to come, Michael would begin to distinguish each in ways beyond their birth order. The youngest brother was a mischief-­maker and the next youngest was a great whistler and imitator of bird language, conducting lengthy conversations with crows, jays, meadowlarks, mockingbirds. The second oldest was the singer, a tenor who arrested the attention of even the hardest among them. The oldest was the foremost. He was heavy-­molded with a bashful smile, but otherwise his face impenetrable. For his family he maintained a stubborn fidelity, was tender and brave.

  “WHERE IS CHARLIE?” MICHAEL said to Aubuchon.

  “I am here,” Charlie said, scrambling from under a wagon.

  “Bring a axe and a pail,” he said, and the two set off down the stream not far until they came to a hollow tree where high up was a hive and with bees all about.

  “Time to prove your worth,” Michael said.

  Charlie was as if touched by electricity. He stroked the tree’s massive sides and then rapped with his knuckles. He was looking for something and when he found it he took hold and peeled away a sheet of bark. With the axe he chopped away at the base until he’d broken through to a hollow that ran the length of the trunk. He made knots of dried grass and piled them in front of the hole and struck a match.

  It wasn’t long before smoke began to curl from the top like a chimney.

  After Charlie smoked the bees a good long while, he flung a rope to the tallest branch and a second rope to which he tied the bucket. Hand over hand he pulled himself up the rope and then moved higher from branch to branch. Perching himself at the hive opening, he pulled up the bucket and began filling it with great chunks of honeycomb he fished from the bee hole.

  Michael fed more green twigs into the fire, watching from the ground, the boy’s figure lost in the smoke that curled from cracks and holes and joined in the air, and then Charlie came back to earth with a pailful, twenty pounds or better. Michael told the boy that in Africa there were little honey birds, light gray in color, that led a person following it to a wild bees’ nest, and once the hive was open and the honey extracted, the honey bird fed on the remaining wax and larvae.

  “It ain’t easy to keep up with a bird,” Charlie said.

  “It looks back every once in a while to wait for you. When it arrives at the hollow tree it points with its beak. After you take that one it leads you to two or three more.”

  “I knew they had those snakes,” Charlie said, still thinking about the men the other night. “They said they were gonna eat them.”

  “I do not believe I could eat a snake,” Michael said.

  “I have eaten a lot worse. Will you go back to Africa?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “If you do, will you take me with you?”

  “I will think about it.”

  “I have thoughts too,” Charlie said.

  “Penny for them,” Michael said.

  “Penny for what?”

  “Your thoughts.”

  “Do you think all cats are gray at night?”

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “Ike Gough said all cats are gray in the dark.”

  “What were they talking about?”

  “The grass widow.”

  “Who is the grass widow?’

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said, holding out his hand. “I will take my penny now.”

  That afternoon they watched as the river behind them swelled to a foaming yellow flood and threatened to breach its banks from a heavy rain above. And then the great heavily loaded wagons were again creaking along over the heavy sands.

  Chapter 12

  The day began with a peculiar stillness and a pervasive quiet. The weather was sultry, without wind and a white sun. As the hours passed the sun became powerful. It hadn’t rained in days and everything was parched to a crisp. The rivers were low and the water so alkali that the last few days they’d boiled what they drank or used for coffee or cooking. They flavored it with sugar and lemon extract and it was still sharp.

  When Michael rode in at noon Cochran and Meadows had yet to return with the game he’d shot. Aubuchon made up for it with a bacon vegetable stew and dumplings.

  “Where do you think they are?” Elizabeth said.

  “Somewhere in the wind,” Michael said.

  “We can’t wait,” Elizabeth said.

  “Perhaps they are broke down,” the reverend doctor said.

  “I do not believe it,” Michael said.

  “Then they have abandoned the hunt,” Elizabeth said. “It is their right.”

  “But not to steal your property,” Michael said.

  “What do you propose?” Elizabeth said.

  “I will go after them. It is my own fault for tempting a thief.”

  He transferred his saddle to Khyber, remounted, and went out. He recrossed the creek to the north and rode to the top of a hill. Below was the plain they’d traveled and everything was open and with the glasses he could see for miles and there was no sign of Cochran and Meadows. Behind him was a splashing and when he looked it was the reverend doctor riding hard to catch up with him.

  He moved north and then west, the reverend doctor lagging behind, and in an hour he’d cut their trail. They were traveling west parallel to the mainline of overland travel in the direction of the faraway silver mines.

  Threading his way through the brushy trail, Michael came upon them. The front right wheel of the wagon had come off and was broken on the ground. Seeing the hopelessness of further flight, they’d kindled a small fire and roasted some of the venison they were transporting. So sudden and intense the encounter, there was a balanced moment when they could have shot each other, but it passed. They sat in the grass with their rifles in their laps. Cochran’s shirt was open and there was a bright scarlet mark about his neck and breast where he’d taken a tumble when the wheel came off. Meadows cal
mly lit his pipe.

  “As you can see,” he said, “we are broke down.”

  “You are lost as well,” Michael said as the red dog caught up and sat beside Khyber.

  “Aye,” Cochran said. “And thirsty.”

  “You’ve not been thoughtless, have you?” Michael said. The temptation of sudden wealth in the silver mines was strong enough to make any man forget his obligations.

  Much to their relief, the reverend doctor came riding up, his horse heated and lathered.

  “You men are not running off, are you?” he said.

  “That’s a load of shite,” Cochran said.

  “Ah, lad!” Meadows said to Michael, “we’d never run on you, if that’s your thinking, and that’s a promise.”

  Michael tossed his canteen down to Meadows. The man drank a little and smacked his lips.

  “That’s food and drink to me,” Meadows said, passing the canteen to Cochran who gave it a sniff and smelled the liquor. He looked up at Michael with a smile, gestured a thank-­you, and then he took a swallow.

  They passed the canteen back and forth until it was half-­empty and then handed it back up to Michael. The reverend doctor had dismounted and was inspecting the damage. He took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

  “We mustn’t dally any longer,” the reverend doctor said. “We need to get this wagon back to camp for repair. We will move the rear wheel to the front. Then we will cut a long pole and extend it from the front of the wagon at an angle to beneath the rear axle and let it drag on the ground while it carries the rear end.”

  Cochran and Meadows laughed at how simple the plan.

  “Brilliant,” Cochran said, and Meadows agreed.

  “Give us a hand,” the reverend doctor said, and the men set to work.

  After they returned to camp to make the repair, there was still too much sun in the sky for the wagon train to travel. Michael set out, and when he reached the next horizon, he paused. He wiped his forehead and lifted the glasses to his eyes. For as far as he could see nothing was green, not grass nor brush nor tree. Across the land in front of him from east to west and as far as he could see south, the country was burned over, black and desolate.

  Khyber stepped into the burn and poked along. Michael spotted antelope that’d been caught in the flames. Some were dead and others so badly injured they could not crawl to cover. As Michael advanced he saw great clouds of smoke rolling up from the plain, rising by degrees, thickening and spreading over the whole face of the country. Out there the plains were wrapped in a great conflagration, the long grass so dry and feeding the flames. The fire shot up bushes and trees, rising on great columns, darkening the atmosphere.

  THEY TRAVELED ALL NIGHT, Cochran and Meadows moving from one shadowy antelope to the next, anxious to prove themselves, taking what meat they could harvest. They picked their way forward for some miles until morning when Michael found good grass and the next river, at least three hundred yards wide. It was a broad and shallow double curve, its current troubled and rapid and the bottom filled with quick sands and mud holes. The river was overclouded with moving vapor, the mingling of its cooler air and the smoke of conflagration.

  Each bend enclosed a bottom where cottonwoods grew up from a watered meadow. Michael directed they should cut sticks and sharpen one end while he shucked off his boots and stockings. He entered the water at the fording place to try the bottom and find the safest ground. He shifted upstream, and halfway across, finding what he was looking for, he began planting his sticks to the opposite bank. By the time they made their crossing, the sun was high and it was time to lay by and wait for the sun to begin its descent.

  When he rode back into camp that afternoon he told Elizabeth it looked as if the flames had scorched the earth beyond the river to its very limits. He spread the map out on the ground and placed the compass upon it. He turned both to make the north of the map coincide with the direction of the needle. He directed her eye with his gloved hand.

  “The grass is burned ahead and there’s fire hopscotching all over the country. Here. Here. And here. Beyond the burn there is good grass.” He then suggested they make camp where they were and rest and wait until the threat of fire disappeared.

  “Can we keep going if we choose to?” she said.

  “We can.”

  She consulted her watch as if its ordered way would provide an answer.

  “There will be grass,” he said, and explained there was a wide swath of land to the next river as yet unburned.

  “You give me no help,” she said.

  “What is unburned can burn,” he said. “The decision is yours.”

  “Then we could burn right here.”

  “Here we can get into the river.”

  “What would you do?” She was coming to rely on Michael in all things, although she’d learned that she had to ferret it out of him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. Decisions such as this were based on chains of incidents, history, hunches. Presented with the same facts one day you would do one thing, and the next day another. On this day he leaned toward caution. On another day he’d be bold. Sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but mostly he was right.

  “My will is not your will,” he said. “Flip the coin if you must.”

  “You’ll not second-­guess?”

  “No.”

  “Then nothing can be gained by dillydallying,” she said.

  Late that afternoon the boys were instructed to fetch in the oxen. Charlie hung on to the tail of one, letting it pull him from the water to the crest of the slope. Darby rode back in to say the conditions had not changed.

  So they journeyed in late daylight into grass and soon could see evidence of the fires in progress. The smoke was at a great distance, and in places there must have been trees because they could see distant flames grow spectacularly tall as they consumed the canopies. The sky was flushed at sundown by the red smoke and turbidly yellow from the invisible burning prairie.

  As the twilight grew into darkness the wheels rolled onto blackened ground and all around them were deep and somber shadows. The air did not cool but was close and warm and smelled burned. The rolling wheels and the feet of the oxen churned up the sooty ash and those in the rear came forward until finally they drove abreast and were as if the teeth in a great rake leaving a rising black billow of murky vapor behind them to float and settle again.

  They were parched and their irritated eyes stung with their own tears. They pulled their hat brims as low as they could and their neckerchiefs over their noses and where they breathed the material wetted and caked black. As the night wore on the skies glowed with the reflection of the distant fires and it was as if they were driving beside hell itself. They moved onto the good grass. To the west a bright line of fire could be seen as if a thousand torches were sweeping across the plains. Out there, the air was full of burning ash and flying cinders, clouds of black pumping smoke.

  Then the wind changed.

  A heavy smoke began to shut out the starlight. Coming from the west were animals, driven before the flames the way they were driven in war by an advancing army. There were deer and antelope, wolves and coyotes, their tails tucked between their legs. Birds flocked the air.

  “What’s best to be done now?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Hold on our course. Go quickly. Get to the river.”

  “What about turning back?”

  “The fire is already behind us.”

  “Good Lord,” the reverend doctor said, and they turned to see a pillar of fire shoot into the sky. Upward and upward it rose, as if a geyser and its treacherous flames consuming whatever invisible tree gave it life.

  Bright flashes shot up here and there. The flames had found the good grass and the men knew to drive. Soon there would be firebrands swept up by the fire gale and streaking down from its highest bloom. The black clouds were upon them in a mighty pall spreading over the earth from west to east. Then came a rift
in the black smoke clouds. It was the bright light of the fire and this made for a new horror, as the flames were seeking out what they would destroy. The men wetted their neckerchiefs and hid their heads to prevent being smothered. They choked on the particles of soot they breathed. They began to move quickly as it would soon be impossible to survive without shelter as the flames rapidly swept on.

  The wind did not abate and nearer and louder it came, blasting the land, lifting turf and sand and stones and sending them airborne and the wind hurling them along in its fury as ever more fire made fire and made more fire in ever-­increasing fury.

  “Keep the fire on your right,” Michael yelled to Elizabeth. “Drive on the river as fast as you can.”

  He wheeled Khyber around and rode in the direction of the oncoming flames.

  “Michael,” she yelled, “Michael,” but he was already enveloped in the smoke of the firestorm.

  Michael pulled up and dismounted. He went down on a knee and deep in the grass he struck match after match to set a backfire. His little fire gained and was soon a small roar and growing. The flames grew with the wind coming from the west and they picked up speed and began to dash east across their intended path.

  He paused but a moment before guiding Khyber into the rear of the little blaze. He followed the fire he started as if chasing it along. It was picking up speed and beginning to fan out from the single point of combustion. Behind him the greater tide of flame was rapidly closing in. He watched the coming of the fury. At his feet, however black with ash, there was still so much left to burn.

  Elizabeth stopped suddenly as a wall of roaring flame swept across their front with Michael following close behind. They waited until it passed and then went forward again and onto the newly burned earth. With a mighty roar the flames reached the burned-over land and then stopped while to their rear the towering flames continued east and crossed behind them. There was again the sound of yokes rattling, gears creaking, and springs clashing as the wagons jounced over blackened furrows and hummocks. Axles, wheels, hooves, dangling buckets, their own shoes they could hear again.